Ji-hoon missed stairs.
Not in a sentimental way. He just missed the idea of them—solid, predictable, unchanging. You always knew where stairs would take you. Up or down. Nothing in between.
But hotel elevators? Those were another kind of hell. Especially when you had to stand in a steel box surrounded by perfume, coffee breath, and at least one guy who didn't know how deodorant worked.
He leaned against the back wall of the elevator, white cane resting at his side, headphones around his neck, and silence playing louder than any song. Joon-won had gone downstairs for coffee, so Ji-hoon was alone—for once.
He didn't mind it.
People always assumed silence bothered blind people. That it meant isolation or emptiness. But Ji-hoon liked silence. It was honest. It didn't lie with fake smiles or forced sympathy. It just… existed.
He counted the floors by the soft ding.
Three, four, five...
He pressed his fingers lightly to the panel next to him, feeling the small, raised dots. He didn't need to, but he did it anyway. Habit. Reassurance.
Then the elevator stopped. Too soon.
Wrong floor.
He smelled her before he heard her.
Citrus shampoo. Rain-soaked coat. And something floral—like cherry blossom hand cream.
A girl.
She stepped in quickly, muttered something that sounded like a tired apology, then froze.
Ji-hoon didn't move.
She said, "Oh. You're that pianist."
He tilted his head. "Am I?"
"You played at the Shin-Ga benefit concert last year, right? The blind one?"
He smirked. "Thanks for narrowing it down to my most defining trait."
"Oh—sorry. I didn't mean—" Her words stumbled, awkward and nervous. "I just—I remembered your performance. The way you played. It was... sad."
Ji-hoon raised an eyebrow. "That's a weird compliment."
"I meant it was beautiful. But sad."
"Better."
The elevator started again. He could hear her fidgeting with something—probably a phone or her coat sleeve. She sounded young. Not nervous in a shy way, but in that I-don't-know-what-to-do-with-my-hands kind of way.
"Do you always smell like piano polish?" she asked.
He smiled. "Do you always smell like wet cherry blossoms?"
"I guess we're both predictable."
The elevator dinged again. His floor.
As he stepped out, he paused, half-turning his head. "What's your name?"
She hesitated. "Hye-jin."
He nodded once. "I'll remember your scent, Hye-jin."
Back in the hotel room, Joon-won was pacing.
Which meant something was wrong.
Ji-hoon didn't even need to ask.
"Okay, so remember that guy from the conservatory?" Joon-won started. "I tried tracing his face from the security footage, and guess what? Nothing. No ID. No logs. He walked in, didn't sign anything, didn't speak to anyone. Like a damn ghost."
Ji-hoon sat on the edge of the bed, fingers running across the keyboard of his travel piano. "Maybe he's part of Si-wan's staff."
Joon-won nodded. "That's my guess too. But here's the weird part—Si-wan's name? It's not just in that old police report. He's connected to your mother's old piano academy."
Ji-hoon stilled.
"She ran that place before she moved to Seoul, right? Guess who invested in it after she died?"
He didn't have to say it.
Ji-hoon's knuckles turned white on the keys. "Why?"
"That's what I'm trying to find out."
The room fell quiet.
Ji-hoon played a soft arpeggio. His fingers moved with precision, but his thoughts were tangled. Notes were easier than people. Music didn't lie. People did.
"Do you think he killed her?" Joon-won asked.
"No," Ji-hoon said.
"Then why—"
"Because the man who killed her wore cologne. Si-wan doesn't. I'd remember that."
Ji-hoon's fingers floated over the piano keys like ghosts drifting over bones. He didn't press down. Not yet. Not until the sound in his head stopped spinning long enough to catch one clear melody. That's how it always worked. The music came after the chaos.
Joon-won leaned against the kitchenette counter, arms crossed tight across his chest like he was holding himself together. That was new. He was usually the type to talk first, panic later. But tonight, he just watched Ji-hoon with this quiet tension—as if afraid that even breathing too loudly might cause him to snap.
"Why would Si-wan invest in her piano school?" Ji-hoon asked finally, voice low but steady. "She was barely known outside of Busan."
Joon-won rubbed his temple. "I don't know. But it wasn't a public thing. No news coverage. No official paperwork filed in his name. The funds were routed through a shell foundation. I had to trace three layers before I found a single account tied to someone in his circle."
Ji-hoon let that sit in the room like smoke. "So he didn't want anyone to know."
"Exactly. Which begs the question—what was he trying to hide?"
Ji-hoon leaned back, exhaling through his nose. His mind wasn't built like Joon-won's. He didn't see connections in documents or codes or paper trails. He felt things. That was the curse and the blessing. He couldn't spot a forged signature, but he could remember the exact number of seconds between his mother's final laugh and her last breath. He could recall how the room changed when fear entered it. How the air felt different. How the silence tasted metallic.
And now… everything tasted like that again.
"Do you think he knew her?" Ji-hoon asked quietly.
Joon-won didn't answer right away.
Then, reluctantly: "I think he had to. A connection like this doesn't just happen out of guilt. If he killed her—he wouldn't donate. He'd disappear. He'd burn it all. But instead… he left fingerprints. Quiet ones. Like he was trying to cover a debt only he knew existed."
Ji-hoon's hands twitched.
He lowered them to the keys again. Played a G minor chord, soft and sad and clinging to the edges of his memory.
"She never mentioned him," he said. "Not once. Not even when we left Busan."
"Maybe she was protecting you."
He shook his head. "She would've told me. We told each other everything."
Another pause.
Longer this time.
Then Joon-won stepped away from the counter and sat on the edge of the opposite bed, elbows on his knees. "You know… you don't have to do this. I know how you think, Ji-hoon. You're trying to hold onto every thread because you think if you let go of one, the whole thing unravels. But maybe it's not all connected. Maybe this is just a coincidence—one messed up, unexplainable coincidence."
Ji-hoon turned his head toward the sound of Joon-won's voice.
And even though his eyes couldn't see, they looked.
"Do you believe that?" he asked.
Joon-won didn't answer.
Didn't have to.
Ji-hoon returned to the piano. Played a slow, haunting progression that built into something almost like hope before collapsing under its own weight. It was a song he hadn't written yet, but it lived in his bones, in the echoes of his mother's humming, in the lullabies she used to sing when the nightmares started.
When the cologne came back.
"You want to know what I remember the most?" Ji-hoon said, barely louder than the music.
Joon-won nodded, forgetting for a second that Ji-hoon couldn't see it.
"I remember her heartbeat."
Ji-hoon's fingers fell still.
"When she hugged me. When she tucked me into bed. Even when she was nervous. I could always feel it. Fast, slow, scared. I didn't need to see her face to know what she felt. Her heartbeat told me everything."
He turned slightly toward Joon-won again.
"But that night? There was nothing."
His voice cracked. Just for a second.
"I reached for her, and I felt nothing. No heartbeat. No breath. Just silence. Like the world forgot how to exist."
Joon-won swallowed hard. "I'm sorry."
Ji-hoon shook his head. "Don't be. Just… don't ask me to let this go."
Silence stretched again.
Then, soft but certain, Joon-won said, "Okay."
Ji-hoon nodded once. It was all he needed.
Hours passed, but neither of them slept.
Ji-hoon sat by the window again, headphones around his neck, the travel piano on the small table in front of him. He didn't play it anymore. Not tonight. But his fingers hovered over the keys like a pianist about to begin—ready, waiting, suspended in the breath before the first note.
Joon-won sat by the desk, scrolling through records, piecing together timelines and financial data, trying to draw a map from memory to motive. He scribbled notes and muttered theories to himself, but Ji-hoon tuned them out.
His mind had gone elsewhere.
Back to the woman in the elevator.
Hye-jin.
Her voice had stayed with him. Not because of what she said, but because of how she said it—like she wasn't afraid of his silence. Like she'd met people who were quieter than him and learned how to listen anyway.
He didn't believe in fate. Not in the dramatic, universe-has-a-plan kind of way. But he believed in echoes. In patterns. In the way certain moments repeated themselves with slight variations, like a melody in a different key.
And Hye-jin's voice? It felt like an echo he hadn't expected.
Maybe that's what scared him most.
Because if the past really was repeating itself—then what came next?
Morning came like it didn't care. Ji-hoon could tell not because the sun hit his eyes—he hadn't seen light in years—but because of the way the world shifted. Air thickened. The distant hum of the city changed pitch. People started moving upstairs. Birds, cars, someone yelling three streets over—he could feel all of it brushing against the edge of his awareness, a tide he'd learned to read long ago.
He sat on the floor now, back against the cold radiator beneath the window, legs stretched out, head tilted up as if he could see the sunrise. His fingers tapped rhythms on the floorboard, soft and absentminded, like they were still composing whatever song had kept him up all night.
Joon-won moved around the room behind him, careful with his footsteps. Ji-hoon could tell when he was trying not to make noise. The pause between each step, the slight hesitation before setting something down—he was trying not to disturb him. It didn't work.
"You don't have to walk like a ninja," Ji-hoon said, voice scratchy from sleep-deprivation. "It's creepier than being loud."
Joon-won chuckled under his breath. "Force of habit. You get pissy when I stomp around like an elephant."
"Because you are an elephant when you're not trying."
Joon-won zipped his backpack shut. "I'll wear slippers next time. For your highness's delicate ears."
Ji-hoon didn't smile, but something eased in his shoulders. That was how they worked—cracks of humor between slabs of grief. Without it, the weight would crush them.
"Where are you going?" Ji-hoon asked, even though he already knew.
Joon-won paused near the door. "The studio. I've got a meeting with Director Park about your upcoming setlist for the charity event."
"Tell him I'm not playing 'Moonlight Sonata' again."
Joon-won sighed like he'd just been punched in the soul. "Ji-hoon. Come on. The press lives for that piece."
"It's a cliché. Every blind pianist plays Beethoven. I'm not a trope."
"You are when the donors pay for the fantasy."
Ji-hoon tilted his head toward him. "Then lie better. Sell them something new."
Joon-won hesitated, hand still on the doorknob. "You sure you're okay being alone?"
That question always made Ji-hoon pause.
Not because he couldn't handle being alone—he'd had years of practice—but because alone and lonely weren't the same thing. And sometimes, the line between them blurred so hard it left bruises.
"Yeah," he said after a moment. "I'll be fine."
Joon-won lingered, like he wanted to say more. Maybe he even opened his mouth to try. But then he just nodded and left without another word. The door clicked shut.
Ji-hoon sat still.
He let the silence settle over him like a second skin.
Then he whispered to himself, "Moonlight Sonata is in C-sharp minor. You know what else is?"
He reached for the keys of his travel piano again.
"Regret."
The first note landed like a drop of ink on glass—barely there, but spreading fast. The second followed. Then the third. He didn't need sheet music. The song unfolded from memory, from instinct. From a place no one else could reach.
And in his mind, as the melody grew darker, more urgent, he saw her again.
His mother.
That last night.
Not her face—he'd long forgotten the details—but her presence. The warmth of her holding him, the sound of her laugh when he mispronounced "soba noodles," the way she always wore socks that didn't match because she said the world didn't either.
He played harder.
Faster.
Until the memory began to crack.
Until something else crept in.
The scent.
That cologne.
Too sharp. Too strong. Too wrong.
It didn't belong in their apartment. It didn't belong near her.
He stopped playing.
His hands clenched into fists on the keys, pressing down until the distorted chords screamed out and died.
Then silence.
It was late afternoon when the knock came.
Three short taps. Then nothing.
Ji-hoon tensed. He wasn't expecting anyone. Joon-won never knocked—he texted first, and he always opened the door like he was being chased. Neighbors didn't check in. Fans didn't know this address. And Hye-jin? She wouldn't—
The knock came again. Softer this time.
He stood slowly, each step calculated, his ears straining for any sound beyond the door. No voices. No breathing. No movement. Just the hallway hum.
Ji-hoon reached for his cane, flicked it open with a practiced snap, and approached the door.
"Who is it?" he asked.
No answer.
His hand hovered over the knob. Logic screamed don't open it. Instinct said it knows your name.
Then the softest voice came through, muffled.
"Sorry. Wrong apartment."
Female. Young. Nervous.
He froze.
It wasn't Hye-jin. He was sure of that now.
But something in her tone—hesitation, fear, guilt—made him unlock the door anyway.
He opened it slowly.
But the hallway was empty.
Inside, Ji-hoon sat back down, unsettled. Not afraid, exactly—he'd lived through worse—but... alert. The knock, the silence, the apology. All of it felt rehearsed. Like someone wanted him to hear their voice and remember it.
But why?
And why now?
He turned back to his piano.
No melody came.
Just the echo of a knock that sounded like it belonged to the past.